Olly stared. “Furniture, sir?”
“Yes.” Jubal turned to Tat. He bent so that he was at eyelevel with the ten-year-old. “I have a job for you, Tat—you and Jonsyl and Patter and Owyn and all the rest who aren’t wearing breastplates yet. I need you to tell them.” Jubal reached into the leather satchel at his waist and brought out a stack of broken pieces of mirror.
Tat and Olly watched with round eyes. “What do you want us to do, sir?”
“I want you to be my archers,” said Jubal. “These are your arrows.”
* * * *
Sharon-zool stared from a rooftop across the smoking city of Danda-lay. “So the proud come to ruin,” she murmured. Three hundred years ago, her grandfather’s grandfathers had bent the knee to Danda-lay and submitted to an ignominious occupation—their punishment for siding with Gabalon in the Wizard wars. In all the years since, the swamp fauns had never quite regained their previous status. Until today.
Sharon-zool frowned. At the highest pinnacle of the city she saw a flag that must have been enormous to look so clear from this distance. A strong gust opened it full length, radiant against the pearl-gray cliff: royal purple, with a white flower. The zool of Kazar turned to a messenger. “Go find out why that flag is still flying. Take it down and burn it.”
* * * *
Tavaris of Danda-lay was the bastard son of Shadock’s grandfather. He had been the captain of the palace guard for decades, but he did not seem to resent Jubal’s ascendancy. More than ninety summers had come and gone since Tavaris first looked on the world, but like a small number of fortunate shelts, he seemed to have stopped aging at sixty. He was small and wiry, with hair gone glossy white. Even now, he was more than competent with a sword, but his vision was failing, and this was the reason given for his re-appointment (none dared call it demotion) to lieutenant of the guard.
Within the castle, no one would have guessed that Tavaris’s eyes were dim. He had been intimately acquainted with those stone corridors when Shadock was still a babe in arms. Some even hinted that he had known of the secret escape tunnel and only arranged for its “discovery” when he smelled trouble on the wind.
Jubal owed much of his easy ascent to Tavaris’s goodwill. The other members of the guard revered the old sage and followed his cues, and Jubal was not too proud to ask for help when he needed it. Jubal loved and valued the old shelt. He also feared him. He’d even considered killing him once, though it shamed him to remember. Tavaris was the only shelt who’d expressed open doubt when the rumors began to circulate about Jubal’s affair with the queen. Once, in a crowded tavern, he’d come to Jubal’s aid during a denial and argued so convincingly that Jubal had been forced into the awkward position of retreating from an apparent victory. There’s nothing like a heated denial to convince shelts that rumors are true, Istra had told him, and she’d been right, except when the denial came from Tavaris.
For a couple of days, Jubal had thought Tavaris might wreck everything, but then suddenly, he had stopped. Jubal was unsure to this day whether he had convinced the old shelt or whether Tavaris knew more than he ought.
Spotting his flashing white head in the courtyard, Jubal knew at once that Olly had found him and that Tavaris had guessed Jubal’s intent. Already, a ragged line of wagons and furniture stretched across the narrowest point of the palace crescent, before the waterfall and just this side of the flood tunnels. A half dozen of the largest guards were struggling with a marble statue of a ram, dragging it towards the nascent barricade, while smaller guards scurried back and forth with tables, dressers, colonnades, and shelt-sized pots overflowing with greenery.
Tavaris had also located two of the three shelts Jubal had requested—Elsa and Margo. Elsa was something of a novelty. Unlike the wood fauns, the cliff faun army did not admit females, and Elsa would never have been permitted even in the guard, had she not come from a wealthy noble family. She was no beauty, but her arrows could find the heart of a hummingbird on the wing. The army would have snapped her up years ago, had she not been female. As for Margo, he was an old army archer, bent, but still able. Merion was a sour drunk, but even in his cups, he could rival Elsa with a bow.
Tavaris turned as Jubal approached. He had a glint in his gray eyes that lifted Jubal’s spirits. “Tavar, I see you’ve been reading my mind again.”
Tavaris bowed. “There’s a problem with the archers, though.” He had a soft voice, and they were standing too close to the waterfall. Jubal had to strain to hear him.
Elsa spoke up. “Shadock’s taken all the arrows!” she said in a full battlefield bellow.
Jubal nodded. Supplies had been a problem from the beginning. Much of the military equipment had been kept in Port Ory and the swamp fauns had had plenty of time during the festival to discover where Danda-lay’s few stores lay. Those buildings had been burned or captured early. Jubal doubted that Shadock had actually taken the arrows out of malice. He probably needed them. Not that he wouldn’t have taken them from us in any case.
“What do we have?” he asked.
Elsa shrugged. “Merion is searching, but probably just our personal supplies.”
“And that is?”
“I’ve got about three dozen, and supplies for fletching maybe fifty more.”
Jubal tried not to grimace. “And you?” He looked at Margo.
“Perhaps twenty. Merion is about the same.”
Jubal took a deep breath. It was no worse than he had expected. “Is Merion drunk yet?”
Elsa grinned. “I pulled him out of the kitchens a quarter watch ago. I don’t suppose he drained more than half a brown barrel.”
Jubal nodded. That was sober by Merion’s standards. “Alright, then.” He opened a leather satchel and pulled out a handful of jagged bits of broken mirror. Jubal handed each of his confused archers a palm-sized piece. “Margo, I want you in the Winged Tower, Elsa in the Ram, Marrion in the Ewe. Shoot any swamp faun or lizard rider who steps into the plaza, exactly as the military archers were doing. Elsa, you take the first shelt, Merion will take second, Margo, third. If more than three come, don’t shoot. Let us handle them on the ground.”
Margo was turning the broken mirror over in his hand. “What’s this for?”
Jubal smiled. “What’s usually your first clue that an enemy sharpshooter is taking aim?”
Elsa grinned. “The light off the arrow head.”
Jubal nodded. “We can’t hold the swamp fauns with arrows. Not even Shadock’s army could have done that if the enemy had massed and charged. But Shadock’s army could keep them from venturing into the plaza without rallying their full force, and we must convince them that we are Shadock’s army for as long as we can. I’ve already sent the youngsters into the other towers with bits of broken glass. The sun is moving down the sky, and the light will be shining in our windows. Flash those mirrors often. I want them to think the windows are full of archers.”
Jubal could feel Tavar’s eyes on him as Elsa and Margo hurried away to find Merion. “It occurs to me,” said the old shelt, “that Shadock may have been wiser than he knew.”
Jubal glanced at him. “How so?”
The cool gray eyes glittered as brightly as the glass in Jubal’s hands. “If I had to choose a shelt to hold Danda-lay with nothing more than smoke and mirrors, I’d choose you every time.”
* * * *
Sharon-zool did not wait for the messenger to complete his duty. She had a bad feeling about that flag. A view from the head of the main street confirmed her suspicions. Beyond the enormous Monument, at the narrowest point in the palace crescent, the cliff fauns were throwing up a barricade with feverish speed.
Sharon-zool selected one of the tall mansion homes on the main street and climbed to its balcony for a better look. While her attendants were clearing away the bodies and straightening the rooms, she studied this latest piece of cliff faun defiance. The barricade seemed pitiful enough. She doubted it was the work of calculated generalship. More like, it had gone up s
pontaneously, as so many street barricades during the night. And like those smaller barricades, her soldiers would swarm over this one like ants over a dying butterfly.
A wink of light caught Sharon’s eye and she turned her attention to the towers. There were three of great height, and dozens only slightly lower. She had been told earlier that archers in those towers were making the plaza perilous to cross, and she’d told her troops to avoid it. “Let Shadock and his brats guard their soft royal underbellies. It’s his army I want dead.”
She wondered if she’d made a mistake there. The palace was the most defensible point in the city, and the remnants of Shadock’s army were surely in there now. She turned to a handful of runners. “Take this message to my officers: we will mass for an attack on the palace. Stay out of arrow range until I give the signal.” Four runners scattered for the stairs. Sharon turned to those who remained. “You will tell Rquar in Port Ory to send down another hundred mounted soldiers. You’ll have to cross the plaza; take shields. Two of you go.”
* * * *
Jubal saw the riders galloping for the entrances to the dry flood tunnels. Elsa’s arrow took one rider between the shoulder blades, but the next two arrows thunked harmlessly into the second rider’s wooden shield, and he vanished up the dark passage to Port Ory.
Those were messengers. Jubal considered. Shadock’s officers had not deigned to consult with the palace guard about their estimates of Sharon-zool’s strength. Jubal doubted they had an accurate idea in any case. The swamp fauns had never been easy to count in their own territory, and last night in the dark, fighting street to street, the estimates were unlikely to be much more accurate. Then there were the lizard riders to consider. Had Sharon-zool employed only a small group of them to breach the flood tunnels, or did they form a large contingent of her army?
Jubal tried to remember everything he’d ever heard about alligator shelts. There wasn’t much. They were half-savage creatures, lawless and wild, incapable of organizing under one rulership. The clans fought over territory and showed little interest in the rest of Panamindorah. Individuals ventured out of their swamps occasionally to trade or attend festivals, but this Lupricasia had seen more of them than ever before. Foolish of us not to have seen a warning in that, thought Jubal. We should have seen many warnings.
He wondered where Daren was. The Queen’s consort had attended Lupricasia without fail for years and regularly won the sword contests. He had a habit of “accidentally” killing competitors and making jokes about it after. He was probably organizing the queen’s troops in Kazar while we feasted, and now he’s probably in Port Ory—he or that cousin of his, Rquar. Rquar was sullen where Daren was flamboyant, but they were equally dangerous.
Jubal wondered how many Sharon-zool had lost in taking the city. Even with her advantage in surprise and numbers, the taking of Danda-lay would not have been bloodless for the swamp fauns. And they haven’t brought in more troops since that first rush, he realized.
Jubal realized something else, too. If Sharon-zool was to hold Danda-lay, she must keep Port Ory, and Port Ory was weak. It had been weak when she took it, and it would be weaker still with its few defenses damaged. She must have left a sizeable portion of her army above.
Reinforcements, Jubal decided. That’s the message she just sent. He looked at the flood tunnel again. “Tavar, what do you think: can lizard riders swim upstream?”
Tavaris had a grin like a mischievous child. “Let’s find out.”
Jubal watched him select four strong guards from among those hauling materials for the barricade and then start for the palace and the deep room beneath the rock of the cliff. Jubal wondered how long the lizard riders had searched for that room when they crept dripping from the pool. Now they’re going to wish they’d held onto it.
Soon the winch would turn, and the flood tunnels would roar again. The water would make problems for their barricade where it lay athwart the channels, but Jubal suspected it would make more problems for Sharon-zool. In all the city, the one point she does not own is the key to the door she came in by. She’ll be as trapped as we are.
* * * *
Syrill watched his shadow weave, changing into grotesque shapes with the ripples in the sand. Sometimes Lexis trotted beside him, sometimes far ahead. In the beginning, Syrill had watched the horizon, but more and more, he only watched his feet. He knew he was lagging. Sometimes he looked up to find he’d begun to angle in the wrong direction, and twice he tripped coming down a dune and got a noseful of sand.
Syrill glanced over his shoulder. Not so far away, a cloud rose from the desert. Now that it was closer, he could see things flashing in it. At least the sun was at his back now; all morning it had been in his eyes. Of course, it had been in their eyes too. Can they see us yet?
He looked ahead for Lexis and didn’t see him. Syrill slowed, then stopped. How long since he’d last looked for the tiger? Has he left me?
Something pushed between his legs from behind. Syrill would have cried out, but his dry throat gave only a strangled croak. He nearly tipped over backwards before his grasping hands found white fur. Then the wind was in his face, and he was leaning forward. Lexis shrugged him into place behind his shoulder blades, his long legs opening out in a full run.
“You’re not—” rasped Syrill. “I’m not—”
“Heavy,” finished Lexis. “We’ve walked long enough, general. Now we run.”
Chapter 15. Arrivals Unannounced
I felt like a starving shelt who has been trying to scrape together enough salt cakes for a pasty, when all the while he has a speckled cowry forgotten in his jacket pocket.
—Diary of Jubal of Undrun
By late afternoon the barricade had risen to nearly twice the height of a shelt, and Jubal had stopped work on it, setting all his heavier guards on the dams and all the less muscular to scavenging for breakables. Jubal inspected the latest offerings from his foragers—several basketfuls of pottery and three large painted vases. All the remaining crystal in the palace had already been collected—its exquisitely cut panels throwing rainbow shadows against the hodgepodge of the barricade. Jubal glanced at the sun. Tavar, what is taking you so long?
Through a chink in the barricade, Jubal kept an eye on the plaza. It looked more like a lake now—reflecting the molten gold of the setting sun. He’d dammed the flood channels just his side of the barricade, sending a shallow, but swift sheet of water over the stone paving of the plaza. The channels went under the barricade, forming a breach in his line, but Jubal had chosen this arrangement for a reason: whatever he poured into the water would diffuse rapidly across the whole plaza, and the swamp fauns could not see what was done.
Jubal watched his enemies watching his hiding place. These fauns have been up all night, he reminded himself, pillaging and fighting. They’re tired, and now they see the water. The sun’s rays grew lower every minute. Soon they would be directly in his eyes. That’s when they’ll attack. He judged they outnumbered the defenders anywhere from six to ten to one. A few flights of arrows had already come across the barricade, but with so few defenders to hit, they’d done no damage.
She still thinks there are hundreds of us. She’ll wait until she has her whole strength, then fire a heavy volley before storming our wall. He’d ordered crude shelters erected against the deluge of arrows.
“Jubal.”
He turned with relief at Tavaris’s voice.
Tavaris sounded excited. “I’ve found another weapon—something I should have thought of in the beginning. We’re not as outnumbered as we—”
A roar from across the barricade. Jubal turned to see a wave of fauns on foot, their cries swelling as they came. He heard the hiss as hundreds of bowstrings let fly their shafts. Tavaris turned and ran to his battle station on the opposite side of the barricade.
Jubal’s fauns at the tops of the ladders were already dumping their loads as they’d been ordered. The basketfuls of glass clattered down onto the barricade. Some of th
e crystal made a high keening sound as it shattered. The fauns by the dams dumped their baskets and barrels into the water. The glass glittered as it fell—beaten as fine as Jubal could make it. The water spewed it swiftly across the plaza.
Arrows were clattering down everywhere now. Tavaris’s foragers scampered into the pavilion around the dam, hauling their sloshing tubs of filth. The palace had a complicated sewage system, and Tavaris had had to trek down into the labyrinth beneath to find any accumulation of refuse. Yet find it, he obviously had. Jubal could smell the reek on the intermittent gusts of breeze. The brown sludge followed the glass into the glittering water.
Then Jubal had no more time to watch. The first of the attackers were swarming up the wall, cursing as they cut themselves on broken glass. Jubal gave one last frantic gesture to the fauns around the dam and then turned to defend the barricade. He thrust his spear through his peep hole and felt it sink into flesh. His satisfaction was short-lived, as the faun on the other side roared with pain and wrenched away, taking the spear with him.
The oil, Jubal realized. I must still have it on my hands. He looked up just in time to see the shadow of a swamp faun leap from the wall onto the shelter over his head. Jubal whipped out his sword and thrust it into the faun’s back as he leapt off the rickety shelter. He caught sight of his fauns around the water emptying the last of the barrels. The liquid flowed as smooth as silk and dark as honey—the last lamp oil in the palace. We’ve had the mirrors, thought Jubal. Now for the smoke. A palace guard picked up one of the torches and flung it into the stream. The water swallowed the torch, and it was gone.
Jubal’s heart dropped into his stomach.
Desperately, the guards hurled in another firebrand and then another, but the last of the oil had swirled away. There was nothing for the fire to catch. I should have made little fire boats, Jubal realized. But it’s too late. Too late.
The Prophet of Panamindorah - Complete Trilogy Page 33